Have you ever wondered if you are doing the right type of exercise for your goal?
After all, the person next to you is doing it, right? And they have achieved… absolutely no results in the last 12 weeks?!
Well, in the next 6 articles I’d like to do some myth-busting around what’s good if you want to achieve effective weight loss, fitness and health.
Welcome to part 1 of 6: The worst things to do if you want to burn fat, lose weight, tone up, and get healthy.
Mistake Number 1
Isolation Exercises
Isolation exercises include singe joint movements such as bicep curls and the adductor machine (you know the one, where you have to push your legs together whilst seated).
For effective weight loss and to get the physique you really want its no good trying to ‘spot target’ certain areas of your body such as your biceps, ‘bingo wings’, or your thigh because you won’t achieve effective results this way.
Isolation exercises are useless if your goal is weight loss (I prefer to use the term ‘fat loss‘), or you want to expose muscles that are currently deep beneath a layer of fat.
So how do you create an effective workout that simply melts away fat and gets you the body of your dreams?
Its easy! But you have to consider every exercise you do, and try to stimulate as many muscle fibres as you possibly can at one go.
Try to stimulate as many muscle fibres as you possibly can at one go.
Isolation exercises like bicep curls and tricep kickbacks won’t get you results. You see people in the gym doing them, but 99 percent of exercisers in the gym don’t achieve the results they desire, and give up after a few weeks!
Don’t follow the crowd – get the results you deserve by performing compound exercises.
Compound v Isolation Exercises
Compound, Isolation and Functional Exercises. What do they mean?
Since you are training for a balanced and healthy body, and you want to tone up, lose weight and get fit, it is necessary to incorporate functional exercises into your training regime.
The term ‘functional exercises’ is a greatly misused description of exercise, and many personal trainers rave about their functional exercise sessions when in fact every exercise serves a function.
Whether that function is to burn calories, sports performance, or to improve your ability to lift a dumbbell whilst balancing on a wobble board is a question you should ask yourself.
When I describe an exercise as functional what I mean in the case of training for weight loss and muscle gain is that it is effective in just that – burning calories and creating enough stress to elicit a growth response and fitness, fat-loss, and toning.
This brings me on to the use of compound and isolated resistance exercises as a means of bringing on improved fitness and body composition.
A compound exercise describes a movement about 2 or more joints such as a squat, lunge or press up. An isolation exercise ‘isolates’ muscle fibres, involving motion about only one joint.
Compound exercises rely on (and stimulate) excellent neuro-muscular coordination between an abundance of muscles around the body all playing different roles from the prime movers to the stabilising effect of fixators and synergists. Great for both effective weight loss and fitness.
In real life you will never use just one joint at a time in every day life and for your weight loss goal it is most effective to incorporate specific compound moves into your routines.
Have you been performing isolation exercises with limited results? Try including compound exercises into your routine and see your results improve.
I hope this helps,
Happy training,
Nico.
Discover The Rest Of This 6 Part Series
Jump To Part 1
Jump To Part 2
Jump To Part 3
Jump To Part 4
Jump To Part 5
Jump To Part 6
Further Resources
You might also like to read this ultimate weight loss guide. This is an in depth guide on what makes great nutrition and the elements that we need to focus on in our lives that will result in better health, performance and body composition. The guide includes actionable steps that you can implement into your life easily. As a supplement to the guide comes the weight loss cheat sheet which is a great start to improved eating habits. You can access it below this article.
In addition to these free resources I offer online personal training services. If you feel ready to take the next step towards consistently exercising well, and would like the confidence to know that you’re following a professionally designed and well considered training plan then online personal training is a great next step.
If your’re struggling with consistently eating well and you feel that this is really holding back your progress, then online nutrition coaching may be your next step. You can learn more about online weight loss coaching and how it can help you to build a better relationship with food and achieve better health, lose weight and perform at your best.